The Lower House of Victoria’s Parliament, the Legislative Assembly (the state’s equivalent of the House of Commons), passed legislation permitting euthanasia by 47 votes to 37 after a debate lasting nearly 26 hours late last week.
The Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill must now be approved by Victoria’s Upper House, the Legislative Council, which is due to consider it in the next two weeks. The vote in the 40-member chamber, where the state’s Labor government has only 14 seats, is expected to be very close.
If the bill passes its second hurdle, Victoria will be the first Australian state to legalise euthanasia, though the Northern Territory (NT) Parliament did so in 1995. That vote was overturned two years later by the Federal Parliament, but this cannot happen this time because Victoria is a state whereas the NT is not.
The vote on 20 October came despite a plea by Victoria’s four Catholic diocesan bishops, as well as ecumenical and interfaith petitions, against the legislation. The issue has split the Government, with Premier Daniel Andrews (pictured) – a Catholic, who reversed his previous opposition to euthanasia after watching his father die of cancer while in palliative care last year – supporting the bill and Deputy Premier James Merlino (also Catholic) leading opposition to the bill.
Former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating wrote in the Fairfax press last Thursday that the bill was “a threshold moment for the country”. “No matter what justifications are offered, it constitutes an unacceptable departure in our approach to human existence and the irrevocable sanctity that should govern our understanding of what it means to be human,” Mr Keating wrote. “Once this bill is passed the expectations of patients and families will change. The culture of dying, despite resistance, will gradually permeate into our medical, health, social and institutional arrangements. It stands for everything a truly civil society should stand against.” It is “fatuous” to assert that patients would not feel under pressure to nominate themselves for termination, he said.
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